Ok, calling it “junk” was a little harsh. It wasn’t a pile of rust, nor was it a luxury ship. It shook a little too hard when leaving a planet’s atmosphere and it used way too much fuel. She would never say as much to her pilot, Jo. He believed his “lady” was the fastest piece of spacecraft beauty ever invented. Violette thought better than to get into the middle of that strange alien-machine relationship.
Sure, there was her inheritance—space credits to keep her living comfortably if she was smart, a list of contacts if she ever needed anything, and her father’s legacy. But space credits and a list of names wasn’t the same as family.
As for her crew, they were nonconformists, all of them, and the product of her alientarian father’s influence. Jo was Slit’therne, part of a snake-like race of aliens found in remote, swampy locations. He had a human-shaped upper body, except that green-yellow scales replaced flesh and webbed hands. He slithered when he moved, propelling himself along with a tail appendage replacing what would have been legs.
Their mechanic, Gil, was Angelion, a race reminiscent of Old Earth culture’s angels, minus the benevolence. The blue-white of his feathered wings rested along his backside, nearly touching the floor. Besides a ridge on his chest, his front side looked to be human. Violette didn’t know much about Old Earth’s angel race, but she knew Gil was far from what she would consider holy.
Isaac, their Corge crewman, came in handy for just about anything they needed him to do. He lacked the hesitance—and the conscience—that plagued most people. A large black horn protruded from the center of his blue forehead. It had a crack along the tip. Corge men emitted a sweet smell that took some getting used to. Violette often supposed the reason for his aloofness was because he couldn’t feel pain, or pleasure, at least in the physical sense.
The last crewman was a Thinean they called Ghost. He was a thin, pale man who rarely left the ship, and seldom showed himself to those on board. It was easy to forget he was there. For all she knew he slept in some crack in her hull.
“Sacre,” Violette swore as she stared at the viewing screen. “What is taking them so long to land?”
“Patience, Captain,” Isaac answered, his tone reasonable. “No reason to rush your revenge.”
Isaac had suggested they let Josselyn go so they could spend the next five years chasing her around the galaxy for fun. Though Violette liked a good pursuit as much as any other space adventurer, she wasn’t a cruel person by nature. She didn’t want to draw out her vengeance. She wanted it over with.
“Do you think we’ll have a problem with her crew?” Gil asked, coming inside the cockpit. “The man you described sounds Bevlon, at least in part. They’re not to be trusted. The fact that they carry one on board is not a good sign.”
Violette stiffened. Bevlons were the ancient enemies of the Angelion. She didn’t judge so harshly, but then her ancestors hadn’t spent a near eternity locked in battle with the Bevlon race. Yet, and she would never admit it to Gil, she couldn’t stop thinking about the man. At first glance, he’d appeared all red, but when she stared at him, she saw he had thin darker lines scrolling his flesh. His black eyes had caused a small chill inside her soul—and not at all in a bad way. The more she thought about him, the more she found herself oddly attracted to him. The fact that he was Bevlon, or part Bevlon, didn’t bother her. Inter-alien relationships weren’t frowned upon in deep space ports—at least not by anyone she cared to listen to.
There was an expression in the man’s eyes that Violette knew well. She felt the hollow echo of it in her soul. It was loneliness and sadness and longing, but it was also the hope that those things would not last forever, and the fear that they would. The man haunted her. Possibly, it was the idea of him that haunted her.
Or, maybe, it was because she’d been without a lover for a very long time and the Bevlon was the first man she’d felt any kind of attraction for.
Sacre.
What was she thinking? He was a member of the crew who saved Josselyn. It was just like her to choose someone to fantasize over that she could never have.
“Sacre,” she cursed again. Then realizing her men